Yoko Ono Quotes

If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

You can't change the system through violence.

Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

Sometimes when we're incensed by the rancid tide of injustice, the impulse is to attack. We must avoid this. We have learned that violence as a means is always unsuccessful.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation.

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance.

At the meeting I argued that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we saved lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people? If we did not take the lead now, I said, we would soon be latecomers and followers to a movement we did not control.

The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

Is it not possible for us all to realize that the masses will never mount to freedom through murder?

My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.

Dictators will be replaced, not by civil war and terrorism, but by organized nonviolent movements that will insure that freedom, human rights, and dignity will be honored under all flags.

There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.

It was easy to kill in South Africa –- to throw a bomb in a movie theatre, for instance - and create panic. But the leaders of the ANC rejected hatred of whites and violence against civilians. They were listened to

Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impracticable for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue to affirm that there is another way.

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents.

Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.